I haven't seen the new Transformers movie, even though I think I'd probably enjoy it. Why? Same reason I never got to use my free pass to see Grindhouse. To fucking long. Not a trend I'm especially happy with.
All the blockbusters in the past 6 years have been 2 1/2 hours long. Arrive in time to get your seat while the lights are on and you'll be in that seat for over 3 hours after you've sat through previews, commercials, and... oh, right! the movie. 50 years ago movies that ran to 3 hours included an intermission, and they weren't tacking on 15 minutes of previews at the beginning and 5-10 minutes' worth of credits on each end.
Look at movies of the 80s and 90s: ET, Die Hard, Jurassic Park, even Spider Man -- all the big popcorn munchers were 2 hours without credits, which comes out to 2 1/2 hours in your seat. Only James Cameron got away with breaking that rule on Titanic and T2, but what does he have to show for it but a stalled career and a pair of movies that haven't aged half as well as the work he did in the 80s. (And a pile of money. With beautiful women. But I digress.)
Then in 2003 we got the first of Disney's Pirates movies, The Matrix Reloaded, Hulk, plus the final installment of The Lord of the Rings, the success of the latter apparently, in hindsight, having been taken too much to heart as proof of audiences' willingness to sit through not only long movies but several long movies in series. The 120-minute cap on the blockbuster was blown clean off.
A study of why studios started developing movies with exceptionally long run times in the wake of 9-11 has yet to be published but is surely in the works.
What I want to know is when someone's going to figure out that shaving off 1/2 hour from the theatrical release means: a) you can turn the house over more frequently, jacking up box office receipts, and b) release a watchable 2 1/2 hour version on DVD instead of a bloated 3-hour version?
All the blockbusters in the past 6 years have been 2 1/2 hours long. Arrive in time to get your seat while the lights are on and you'll be in that seat for over 3 hours after you've sat through previews, commercials, and... oh, right! the movie. 50 years ago movies that ran to 3 hours included an intermission, and they weren't tacking on 15 minutes of previews at the beginning and 5-10 minutes' worth of credits on each end.
Look at movies of the 80s and 90s: ET, Die Hard, Jurassic Park, even Spider Man -- all the big popcorn munchers were 2 hours without credits, which comes out to 2 1/2 hours in your seat. Only James Cameron got away with breaking that rule on Titanic and T2, but what does he have to show for it but a stalled career and a pair of movies that haven't aged half as well as the work he did in the 80s. (And a pile of money. With beautiful women. But I digress.)
Then in 2003 we got the first of Disney's Pirates movies, The Matrix Reloaded, Hulk, plus the final installment of The Lord of the Rings, the success of the latter apparently, in hindsight, having been taken too much to heart as proof of audiences' willingness to sit through not only long movies but several long movies in series. The 120-minute cap on the blockbuster was blown clean off.
A study of why studios started developing movies with exceptionally long run times in the wake of 9-11 has yet to be published but is surely in the works.
What I want to know is when someone's going to figure out that shaving off 1/2 hour from the theatrical release means: a) you can turn the house over more frequently, jacking up box office receipts, and b) release a watchable 2 1/2 hour version on DVD instead of a bloated 3-hour version?
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Oh dear God